If the Mediator must be God and man in one person, did then the Son serve as mediator prior to his incarnation? If so, how?

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Paul Korte
OPC
Flint, MI

They who perceive in themselves discoveries of the divine goodness, so full and absolutely perfect, and who make them the subject of earnest meditation, will never embrace new doctrines, by which the very grace they feel so powerfully in themselves is thrown into the shade. --John Calvin

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Atemporality extending into the temporal. Thats like asking if the Lamb was slain before the foundations of the world why did He need to suffer and die on the Cross. (well its the reverse question but same answer)

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Robert K. "Kelly" Brumbelow
In Inquirer's class at Grace Presbyterian (PCA) Cedartown, GA
Cedartown, Georgia

Dear Lord and Father of mankind, Forgive our foolish ways;
Reclothe us in our rightful mind, In purer lives Thy service find,
In deeper reverence, praise. - John Greenleaf Whittier 1807-1892

Paul:

I would point you to all the instances of the Angel of the LORD in the Old Testament. Each of these can be shown to be a theophany [or, more accurately, a Christophany]. Then examine each of those texts to see in what way the Second Person of the Trinity is displayed as Mediator [the latter being a study I have not done, I'll admit].

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Wayne Sparkman, Th.M.
Director, PCA Historical Center, St. Louis, MO
Blogs: The Continuing Story and PCA History Blog

I believe the answer may be found in Q & A 34, and the expression "did all fore-signify Christ then to come." The Mediatorial work of Christ in the Old Testament was conducted with a view to the incarnation.

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Yours sincerely,


"Illum oportet crescere me autem minui."

Excellent. I was studying the letters of Vermigli to the Polish churches yesterday in which addressed certain Christological controversies -- namely, that Christ was only mediator according to his human nature. Vermigli (with the orthodox) arguing that both natures were necessary for the work of mediation, the question was naturally raised as to how he could have so functioned prior to actual assumption of human flesh. Vermigli answers in Letter 246 that he could only have been mediator as "he who was going to suffer and be crucified at an opportune time," as you hinted at above -- it required a foresight to his future incarnation (wherein "...the two natures are conjoined [before the incarnation] not because they were then really together, but because they were regarded and linked together in God's knowledge and acceptance" [letter 267]). This last following quotation (I think) sums up the matter nicely:

This [the office of mediator] does not befit him insofar as he is of the same essence and of equal power and dignity with the Father. But if we may look on him insofar as he is at some time to be sent from the Father to become man, to labor and to suffer and undergo death in the flesh for the salvation of the human race, he was even then our mediatorm should we employ this perspective. (Letter 267)

(Neither of the above letters were found in Vermigli's Loci Communes, but have recently been translated by John Patrick Donnelly in Letters and Sermons in the Peter Martyr Library.

Although the Son was always intended to be the Mediator, and engaged in some mediatorial functions before the incarnation, it seems that there is a difference in what was done. Obviously the Son could never have completed his work of mediation without the incarnation, and so those aspects of that work that were related to being under the law, to suffering, in short, to being human, were not engaged in prior to the incarnation, whereas certain functions, like the exercise of power and the giving of revelation were.

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Ruben
Moderator
F.P.C.I.
Indiana

Vanities and disguises have covered us, and thereby we are naked; licenciousness hath inflam'd us, and thereby we are frozen; voluptuousness hath fed us, and thereby we are sterved, the fancies and traditions of men have taught and instructed us, and thereby we are ignorant.
John Donne

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Calvinistas Conversando
Teología en Mexico
The Howling Wilderness

Ruben, I would concur with the following qualifications:

1.) That (for example) the revelation given in Christ's prophetic office prior to the historical event of the incarnation was nevertheless given by the Son incarnandus, or the son as he was to be incarnate: the revelation delivered was founded upon the future event.

2.) Though the Son was not yet historically, actually incarnate, nevertheless he was so in God's foreknowledge and acceptation, whereby his office was at that time able to be successfully discharged.

3.) In short, that Christ's mediation cannot be considered apart from both natures and the incarnation, whether as an historic reality, or with a foresight to it.

Is this agreeable?

I don't have any difficulty with your qualifications. Obviously none of His mediatorial activity would have been engaged in without having not only the incarnation but also the death and resurrection in view. What I wanted to stress was that it was not every aspect of mediatorial activity that could be carried out in the preincarnate state, and so to draw attention to the different aspects of the work of mediation before and after the incarnation. Of course a distinction can also be observed in some respects between the work of mediation in the state of humiliation and that of exaltation.